A Complete Guide To Cross Platform Mobile Development

Quite a number of businesses, organizations and individuals have found mobile applications very instrumental in the day to day activities. Due to the development in technology, many companies have come up with several mobile platforms. This has facilitated the activities of the various users due to a wide range of mobile apps development platforms. However, it should be noted that developing such platforms requires dedication since it is not something that can be done over night.

What is the need of cross platform mobile development?

Cross platform mobile development plays so many roles in the technological industries. It is through these tools that one is offered applications which are very advantageous to both application developers and the end users. They facilitate corporate developers on software and hardware without much hustle and overspending.

Through these tools, smart phones can easily be used and navigated through since they are able to store data. This is a great boon to the developers as it not only saves on costs but also renders their devices effective thus compete on the market.

Another influential trait of these tools is their scalability, elasticity and ease of adoption. It is true that the economic times aren’t friendly. Every company is trying therefore to produce their devices and applications at low costs. Hence these tools come in handy to ensure high quality and cheap applications developed.

With this kind of tools, mobile users find it easy to use their gadgets since data storage and maintenance are enhanced through the applications. Apart from that, mobile users do not require the infrastructure to maintain their mobile devices.

Indeed the pros of the cross platform mobile development stand out. The first one being cost saving. Designers have to heavily invest in developing infrastructure among other important resources. Cross platform mobile development offers a spontaneous reach to scalable application tools for developing tablet and mobile applications.

Due to the increased demand for the cross platform mobile development tools, quite a number of companies have come up to create these tools. Unfortunately, many companies are not legitimate. In fact, they produce rogue products. This is a problem that has highly crippled the software industry. Though some laws to curb this vice have been established, consumers are not yet guaranteed legitimate applications. In light of that, there is need to embrace vigilance when planning to acquire an application for your mobile device. It is wise to consider this lest an individual risks installing vague software to her or his mobile device. Ultimately it proves catastrophic to the entire device.

Below are the five main tools that have played a tremendous role in cross platform mobile apps development.

This is one of the greatest cross platform mobile application development tools. It is known for its ability to program the web. It has got the SDK kit which helps in carrying out activities to bring out various development features such as device profiles, run-times, libraries, integrated compilers among other features. One peculiar thing about moSync is that it has the ability to not only offer web programming services but also offer eclipse based IDE to facilitate C/C++ programming.

Through the help of standard web development languages, this tool is able to develop apps for devices such as blackberry, symbian, palm, IOS and Android. Apart from that, this application gives developers ample time when developing hardware features for GPS, cameras and accelerometer among other devices. Lastly, phone gap offers online training and adobe application allowing developers access the API hence design applications through its own platform.

Ruby is very common among web developing companies and industries. This is due to its pronounced effectiveness in such companies. The ruby based framework offers developers a chance to build applications that are compatible with many mobile phones and operating systems. For instance, through this tool one can come up with applications compatible with IOS, androids, RIM, Symbian and window mobiles. In essence, all the major operating systems can get served through this kind of application tool.

When it comes to developing mobile platforms that are compatible with numerous platforms then widget remains the best tool to execute this. It is through the standard web technologies that this tool becomes operational. Such web technologies include the CSS3, HTML5 and JavaScript. One peculiar thing about this platform is its ability to provide services such as debugging, project management, code editing, collaboration and version. This is attributed to its enhanced development version. Through this tool, most developers have been enabled to come up with applications that augur well with webOS, android and IOS platforms.

This kind of tool facilitates the development of titanium development platform. Appcelerator is a development platform solely used to create indigenous applications for tablets, web and mobiles. Apart from enhancing the titanium platform, appcelerator tool is very instrumental in developing web programming languages like HTML, Javascript and PHP among other applications. on the other hand, titanium enables its users to access the location information of around three hundred APIs. On the general scale, the appcelerator tools are concerned with the hardware of most devices as the software or data of the device is stored on the device itself or on cloud.

Conclusion

There are so many ways to ascertain the legitimacy of any application. One of them is visiting the internet and going through websites of companies offering such applications on the market. Try to ascertain the reputation of the applications offered by a given company. The best way to achieve this is going through the reviews and comments made about each particular company products. Alternatively, one can talk to friends or associates who have had some experience with these applications. As the discussion continues, quite a number of names of companies shall come up. Note down such names as they could just be the right references in decision making process. Another importance of talking to experienced people is that you learn the commonly made mistakes when choosing the devices with any make resulting from the cross platform mobile development tools.

Mike Wagner

This Guest post is by Mike Wagner. He is a Texas based professional software developer. He is currently associated with eldev.com as a software consultant.